GOTTESMAN: Home is where the heat is?

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. – Robert Frost

We call New England our home, but during winter, I dream of warm breezes and no snow.

I grew up here. As a child, I had to find a way down my icy hill to school every day (often on my butt). As a young adult, I learned to drive in snow, how to drive defensively, how to drive through the skid.

But, as I get older, my thoughts turn, not to winter fun in the snow, but to warm escapes. In my mind, I am not sitting on a beach (because that would involve a bathing suit and, well, my imagination is not good enough). But I am sitting in a Tuscan trattoria, or strolling along a jungle path through a moderate climate, enjoying the sun and cooling breezes (no bugs, apparently my imagination is strong enough to eliminate those).

I am not standing on a chair, securing plastic to a single pane window, or throwing neon-colored ice melt on a frozen sidewalk.

I know I won’t leave New England. My husband’s roots are a bit deeper than mine at this point, so as long as he is willing to shovel, I guess we will stay.

Still, I question my sanity every time I have to drive in a winter storm.

Take last week’s little visit from Jack Frost. Honestly, it wasn’t enough to plow, though I would have liked to have seen a sander or two on the roads as I attempted to make it home.

Still, I think I would be fine if it wasn’t for other drivers.

Back in the Dark Ages, when I took my driver’s classes, they taught defensive driving. The biggest rule of winter driving — the one the instructor stressed above everything else — was leaving room between your car and the car in front of you. That way, if that car has to stop, you have time to react. If a deer jumps out in the road, and the driver in front of you has to swerve to avoid it, you don’t find yourself in that car’s back seat because you have room to avoid a crash.

I still practice that today, but some days I think I am the only one.

Take last Monday night. I was driving down Route 110, near the reservoir. There was a line of traffic, but it was moving steadily, just a little slower than the speed limit due to the road conditions. I kept several car lengths between me and the driver ahead of me. I wish the car behind me had afforded me the same courtesy (or common sense). Instead, the headlights were directly behind me, probably one car length back.

I tried to concentrate on the car in front of me, ignoring how close the car behind me was, but I kept imagining what would happen if I had to hit my brakes to avoid a deer or a rock in the road.

When I got home, I asked my husband when people stopped thinking about what could happen in place of how fast they could get somewhere.

He said he always thinks about hitting his brakes, just to get the point across, but I worry about the skill of the driver behind me to avoid any accident.

Now that February has come, we are in the heart of winter. And, as New Englanders, we know we can get storms through April.

So my mind is finding a second home in a warm climate, where it can go whenever the real world becomes too cold to bear. No packing required.

I’ll send a postcard.

Jan Gottesman is managing editor of The Banner. She can be reached at bannews@yahoo.com.